Todos Tenemos Un Plan Reviews

It's a discovery performance that would have launched an unknown actor toward stardom, but it's being given by someone you've watched for years. Neat trick, that. - Matt Zoller Seitz

Todos Tenemos Un Plan Reviews

Mortensen is quite superb as the two chalk-and-cheese brothers.

Radio Times
1 June 2013

The atmosphere can be cut with a machete, but the plausibility resides in Mortensen's distinctive performances rather than in the narrative itself.
Philip French
The Observer
3 June 2013

It is his performance that really will keep you watching; he has always been an actor that demands you attention but this dual role heightens that further.
He switches between the two brothers with total ease and it is fantastic to watch

Helen Earnshaw
Femail First
31 May 2013

If you, for some reason, want to watch Viggo Mortensen watching Viggo Mortensen take a bath, then, my friend, your luck is in – as the renowned star of The Lord of the Rings franchise turns in one of the finest performances of his career, taking on the role(s) of identical twins in Ana Piterbarg's intense, if somewhat unfulfilling drama Everybody Has a Plan.

Stefan Pape
Heyuguys.co.uk
28 May 2013

Mortensen is brilliant in both roles, able to pull off gruff and taciturn as one twin (he is at his best in roles that require him to say little and feel a lot) and ultra conventional, pretending to be gruff and tactiturn, as the other.

Viggo Mortensen is lord of all things
Chitra Ramaswamy
The Scotsman
24 May 2013

The problem there is the murder story isn't all that interesting and, in truth, Piterbarg doesn't seem all that interested in it either. What gets her attention, and what holds ours, is how great Mortensen is. He works hard to make it look effortless but it's hard playing three characters: Pedro, Agustin and Agustin-as-Pedro, which is different again.

After the intriguing opener the story just fades away. Mortensen's performance, however, might just be worthy of the admission price.

Gavin Burke
Entertainment.ie
14 May 2013

Mortensen is on top form - twice over - but while the noir mood gathers like a black cloud, the story frustrates.

Andrew Osmand
Empire Magazine
14 May 2013

Mortensen quietly piles desperation atop desperation here, his eyes showing that part of Agustín realizes how unlikely it is he'll convince neighbors and colleagues he's the man they've known for years.

John DeFore
The Hollywood Reporter
11 September 2012

Viggo Mortensen's trademark quiet strength and enigmatic stillness works to impressive effect in Ana Piterbarg's moody and evocative drama Everybody Has A Plan (Todos Tenemos Un Plan), largely set against backdrop of Argentina's tough and isolated the Tigre Delta, a labyrinthine tangle of islands and waterways which has its own codes and sense of justice.

Mark Adams
Screen Daily
13 September 2012

Mortensen puts in a fine pair of performances in the lead roles, inhabiting Agustin with a nervous energy and Pedro with a sleaziness that allows him to play against himself effectively. This is rarely embraced as a gimmick, with the two characters only sharing one or two scenes, and allows the actor to show off quite a range.

Sam Faulkner
Screen Geek
17 October 2012

A lesser actor would make the whole thing look gimmicky. Not Mortensen, who's fierce, totally immersed and utterly convincing as both brothers.
Cath Clarke
Time Out London
17 October 2012

I already knew Mortensen as a versatile actor who could nail macho opacity ("Eastern Promises"), toxic alpha maleness ("G.I. Jane"), flamboyant, Method-flavored intensity ("The Indian Runner") and other spots on the Leading Man spectrum. But what he's doing here is even more impressive because it erases the memory of everything you've seen him do before. If he'd been credited with, "And Introducing Viggo Mortensen," I doubt anyone would have complained. It's a discovery performance that would have launched an unknown actor toward stardom, but it's being given by someone you've watched for years. Neat trick, that.

By Matt Zoller Seitz
rogerebert.com
16 March 2013

Mr. Mortensen, who grew up in Venezuela and Argentina and speaks a fine, mumbly Spanish, does an excellent, unflashy job of making the two brothers distinct. The dead-eyed Pedro has an extra layer of scruff that the sad-eyed Agustín can't approach, even with his beard and his dingy sweaters and flannels.

And Mr. Mortensen keeps you watching, even when the movie's storytelling underwhelms. But "Everybody Has a Plan" is less about story than about texture and atmosphere. They stay with you, as does the haunted visage of Agustín, drifting on the delta waters.

Rachel Saltz
New York Times
22 March 2013

It should seem somewhat moot to describe a man, who has had a film career run nearly three decades, as innovative but his last four films have made audiences aware just how multi-faceted he can be. Here, although they do not share the screen together for very long, he actually manages to suggest a real sense of individualism between Pedro and Agustín and, throughout, a manner of acting that relies upon physicality rather than the spoken word; few actors can emote so strongly and evidently.

Hel Jones
Eat Sleep Live Film
26 October 2012

But the picture is polished in a minimalist, modest way, and it features an intriguing performance from its star, Viggo Mortensen (in Spanish, no less). It's a low-key, confident picture, made by a filmmaker who's not afraid of using a tripod

Stephanie Zacharek
Film.com
23 March 2013

Everybody Has a Plan is a very quiet and understated film, serving to make the infrequent moments of intense violence all the more shocking. The acting is flawless from Mortensen and each of the supporting cast. It is so gritty and real that the film becomes just as unsettling as it is captivating. Everybody Has a Plan is a compelling look at the human psyche and what lengths people will go to to escape their inner demons.

Amanda Keats
New Empress Magazine
23 September 2013

Viggo Mortensen is one of those people. You probably sat near one in high school, or have one on your floor at work. Good looking, effortlessly talented across a range of fields, just so perfect at everything you want to run them down with your car.

Because he probably had time between art exhibitions, dashing off a book of poetry and ridding Middle Earth of Sauron, the man has managed to become fluent in more than a half-dozen languages.

He makes Spanish look effortless in this Argentinian film, where he plays twin brothers. Not can-you-direct-me-to-the-disco holiday Spanish, but that authentic, guttural Spanish that is spoken like machine-gun fire....

Mortensen is as good as expected, significantly different as the two brothers, and not just because one had a beard and coughs up blood while the other is clean-shaven.

Viggo entertains in evil twin role
Cris Kennedy
29 June 2013

Evoking memories of things like A Simple Plan, Sommersby (and its progenitor The Return of Martin Guerre), Dead Ringers, TV's Dexter and fellow Argentine thriller The Aura, it begins with a jolting almost Lynchian shift between two "worlds" before the puzzle pieces slowly fall into place and the film's thrilling but taut sense of menace and danger kicks in. Surrounded by a fabulous collection of character actors with memorable phsyiogs, the eclectic actor not only proves his range but also his adeptness at Spanish (honed from spending half his childhood in Argentina while his father worked on chicken farms and ranches), as well as again proving his ability (previously best showcased in the likes of A History of Violence and Eastern Promises) to mix gentle grace with simmering violent tendencies.

James Croot
Stuff NZ
19 June 2013

...the ever-impressive Mortensen grounds the intrigue in his dual personas, an achievement for the actor not in his convincing mastery of aptly mumbled Spanish (with La pistola de mi hermano and Alatriste also on his resume), but in the effortless variance he affords the two distinctive characters. As Agustín, he sulks with a restless loss of purpose; as Pedro, he inhabits the steeliness of confidence; as the former becomes the latter, he bridges the gap with moody, brooding intensity. Indeed, his is a performance that expands to fill the void left by the lightness of details, offering a lingering reminder of how little he has been seen on screen in recent years. His dominance may have not been the filmmaker's plan, but the feature is all the better for it.

Sarah Ward
Trespass Magazine
28 June 2013

Even those who sometimes find his dour intensity wearing will have to admit that here, inhabiting his dual personas and speaking in the Spanish dialect with which he grew up, his performance is the riveting fulcrum that holds together a stately narrative and turns an intriguing premise into an impressively gripping fable.

Paul Fairclough
Little White Lies
1 June 2013

Agustín/Pedro is really a third main character to whom Mortensen offers that mask of ambiguity and fear that was so much required by the script. ...Technically the film gets 10 points - with great art direction - and Mortensen, who has given his all, is supported by Fanego with another great performance (remember ¡Atraco!).

I Know That You Know I Know
By Pablo O. Scholz - translated by Zoe
Clarin
29 August 2012

The film's narrative has a very fluid rhythm, and Bonelli´s cinematography is remarkable and key to building an atmosphere of suspense . Viggo Mortensen plays the brothers, each with their vocabulary, personality, and the circumstances in life in which they find themselves.. He gets into their skin and succeeds in conveying credibility through his acting.

By Elena Marina D'Aquila
A Sala Llena
28th August 2012

Mortensen faces a deadly triple flip: to play a character, his brother and the version of Pedro that Agustín adopts in order not to set off the alarms of those who knew the real one. In that transition, please, someone point out which emotion is not out of range. Well, the actor nails them all. Even to the point of turning an impossible, farfetched situation into something as human and real as the news of incidents in any newspaper. In fact, the really surprising thing is that Todos tenemos un plan is not based on one of them.

There's no denying Viggo Mortensen's total intensity and rawness as an actor, in The Road, The Lord of the Rings, and as a muse in David Cronenberg's A History of Violence, Eastern Promises, and last year's A Dangerous Method, as a chatty, heady Freud. In Everybody Has A Plan, his fourth Spanish-language film (who knew?), helmed by Argentinean first-time feature writer-director Ana Piterbarg, the handsome blue-eyed actor wraps his arms around a dark, gritty role worthy of Cronenberg: identical twins.

Solvej Schou
Entertainment Weekly
10 September 2012

Viggo plays twin brothers and, like every role he takes, commits to it completely. There are only two scenes in which the brothers interact, and while movie magic makes it seamless it is Viggo who makes it real.